Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (47 page)

So how could they
make
anything comparable to what humans made? What could their technology be in Larfold, where Odinfolders hadn’t already created an infrastructure of tools and machinery?

The mice manipulated genes—they admitted to having done that, when they claimed to have created Knosso and Umbo. Well, actually, it was the Odinfolders who had claimed those feats, but then it became clear that really accurate displacement was done only by the mice.

So the Odinfolders had worked metal and built mighty cities; the mice worked with time and with genes, and made new species.

Then Umbo reached the only sensible conclusion. The
mice must use time-and-space displacement for everything that humans used tools for. They never had to stand close to a fire; they could shift masses far too heavy for them to move by hand.

So if the mice made it all the way to Earth undetected, what if their time displacement didn’t work? There was no reason to believe that any of this planet-rooted time-shifting could function away from Garden. If it didn’t, what was their fallback plan? To reproduce at an insane rate, eat all the food on Earth, and starve the human race to death? Not likely—mice were too easy to kill.

Perhaps they could genetically manipulate the humans of Earth. But in what way? Any genetic change they made would take many long human generations to take effect. It couldn’t stop the destruction of Garden a year after the Visitors left.

And now that he was here in Larfold, Umbo couldn’t go to the library in Odinfold and try to learn more about what the mice could do. He couldn’t even ask Mouse-Breeder, which he’d like to do, even though he knew Mouse-Breeder would probably lie to him. Or the mice were lying to Mouse-Breeder so any answer he gave would be wrong.

The mice could move items from one place to another, and from one time to another. If that power continued to work on Earth, they would have a wide range of possibilities. They had killed Param by inserting a slab of metal into her body. But could they have simply
removed
a vital organ from her?

What were the rules governing their powers? How many mice did it take to handle a single displacement? Did the items they shifted in time and space have to be already detached or detachable from all other items? Or could they move a section of
a pillar out of place and collapse a roof? And how large an object could they move? A building? A starship?

Could they move the Visitors’ starship into space very near the Sun and let it roast?

No, that couldn’t be it—if the Visitors did not return to Earth, it would only signal the humans of Earth that Garden posed some kind of threat.

All Umbo’s questions went around and around in his head.

Until, in the middle of the night, he got the answer.

He woke up Param.

“What do you want?” she demanded. “I was asleep!”

“I know,” said Umbo. “But how can you sleep, when I have the answer?”

“What answer?”

“The answer to the problem that we don’t know enough to decide what to do about anything. We don’t even know enough to know what questions to ask.”

“For this you woke me?” asked Param. “Go away.”

“I woke you because you’re the solution.”

“You have no problems, I assure you, to which I am a possible solution.”

“We need to go into the future and meet the Visitors and see what happens with them and then come back here and figure out what to do about them.”

Param closed her eyes, but at least she was thinking about it. “So you want me to slice time to get us into the future faster.”

“And then when we’ve seen enough, I bring us right back here. Tonight. Nobody even knows we went.”

“But I’ve never sliced time that far,” said Param. “It would take weeks.”

“You’ve never
wanted
to slice time to that degree,” said Umbo, “because you didn’t want to miss whole days and weeks and months. But if you really pushed it . . .”

“Maybe,” said Param.

“And we still get a quick view of what’s happening. Day and night, seasons changing.”

“So we’d know when two years had passed,” said Param.

“We’re the ones with these time-shifting abilities,” said Umbo. “Let’s use them.”

“Without Rigg.”

“Rigg’s doing whatever he thinks is right. Why should we do anything less than that?”

Param sat up and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I don’t actually hate you, you know,” she said.

“That’s good to hear,” said Umbo. “Because you had me fooled.”

“I don’t
like
you,” said Param. “But I don’t hate you, either. The others keep lecturing me because I don’t treat you right.”

“You treated me right when you took us off the rock in Ramfold,” said Umbo. “And when you got us through the Wall. In the crisis, you come through.”

“And so do you.”

“So let’s try it. If it’s more than you can do, or want to do, you can just stop and I’ll bring us back here.”

“
Can
you bring us back with any kind of precision?” asked Param. “I thought you needed Rigg’s pathfinding in order to hook up with an exact time.”

“If I overshoot in coming back, then you can slice us back up to tonight.
You’re
precise even if I’m not.”

Param got up. Loaf stirred. Olivenko didn’t move.

Param rummaged in her bag and took out her heavy coat.

Umbo looked at her like she was crazy.

“What if it’s winter when we stop?” asked Param.

Umbo got his heavy coat out of his bag, too.

They took each other’s hands, facing each other.

“I think you two are reckless fools,” said Loaf, who was apparently awake after all.

“But we can’t stop them,” said Olivenko, who was awake as well.

“Thanks,” said Umbo. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

Param began slicing time.

Umbo had been through this before, as they leapt from the rock. It didn’t feel like they were moving forward through time at a different pace. Instead, it looked as if the rest of the world were speeding up. Only this time, Umbo didn’t see people or animals move quickly by. He didn’t see them at all. Just glimpses of a person here, a person there. Days flitted by in a blur of suns passing overhead, flickering with stars that appeared in a momentary darkness and then were gone.

Snow on the ground, gone, back, gone, deeper, melted, back again, gone again. And then spring, a profusion of green; a summer just long enough to feel the heat, and then it was cool and the leaves were gone and the grass was brown and there was snow again. Spring. Summer. And Param slowed down the world around them and gradually they came to a stop.

It was night. There was no one on the beach, no one farther inland either, as far as they could tell.

Rigg could always tell where other people were, or whether they were there at all, thought Umbo. I wish that he were here.

But then the wish passed from him. He didn’t want to be dependent on Rigg right now. He and Param could do this thing alone.

“I don’t think we want to be seen,” said Umbo. “I think we want to watch from hiding.”

“Then let’s turn invisible,” said Param with a smirk. “It’s my best trick anyway.” She took his hand again, and walked with him toward a stand of trees and bushes, as the night raced by around them.

Even when they came to a stop amid the trees, and the sun rose swiftly, Param kept on slicing time. But now the world was moving slowly enough that they could see the blur of scurrying mice. Mice everywhere among the trees and grass.

Mice going into and out of holes in the ground.

Of course they don’t build buildings. They dig holes. They don’t have to shore up tunnels so they don’t cave in; mice can move through such tiny passages that they hold themselves up without any additional support. These fields could now be a city of a hundred million mice, and no one above the surface would know it.

Rigg would know, because of the paths. But could even he sort through the movements of all these tiny mammals?

The great hole in Umbo’s plan was now obvious. They could move into the future, but
where
in the future did they want to be? Where would the Visitors come, when they came to Larfold?

If
they came to Larfold. There was a thought. What if the Visitors saw no trace of human habitation in Larfold, and so didn’t bother to come there?

What if the mice had insisted on invading Larfold precisely because they knew the Visitors would not come, and perhaps the Destroyers would not destroy the wallfold because they thought no humans lived there? After all, the account of the destruction of “all” of Garden in the Future Books might not be accurate.

Or maybe this was where the mice were trying to construct underground shelters where they could live for decades without coming to the surface. Maybe they meant to wait until Garden was habitable again, and only then emerge and inherit the world.

Why did we always assume the mice were trying to attack Earth? All they had to do was hide deep enough to escape notice.

How much about the mice was in the ships’ logs? Would the Destroyers be looking for them? They couldn’t have been on any previous visit, because the mice had only existed for the first time on this go-round.

The Visitors will come to Larfold, thought Umbo. They’ll be thorough. The ships’ logs will tell them that there was a colony here and that somehow it went underwater. So they’ll come here looking for the site of the colony.

And that’s where we are, or nearly so.

Umbo raised a hand in a stopping gesture, and Param slowed them down. The mice resumed a normal pace—which was still pretty frantic. Almost instantly, there were mice on their clothing, up on their shoulders.

“You know who we are,” said Umbo softly. “We’re about
to go into the future. If you want to see your families again, get off.”

The mice understood and scampered down their clothing and got about a meter away before they turned and sat watching Umbo and Param.

“Why did you make us stop?” asked Param.

“We want to be about three hundred meters that way.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s where the colony was, so that’s where the Visitors will come.”

Almost at once, the mice took off in the direction Umbo had indicated. “It’s nice to be regarded as an authority by somebody,” he said.

“Since the mice already know where we’re going, can we just walk there in realtime?”

“Sure,” said Umbo. “Though if there are any Larfolders on shore, they’ll see us. Not to mention the Visitors themselves, who might be watching from space right now.”

Param sighed. “I’ve spent plenty of time slicing time already. A little more won’t kill me.”

Though of course if the mice decided to try their little stunt with metal again, it
might
kill her. “Never mind,” said Umbo. “I prefer to walk in realtime myself.” He let go of her hand and started to walk out into the open.

She hesitated a moment, then followed him.

“I wonder,” said Umbo, “what would happen if I peed while time-slicing. I mean, as soon as the piss leaves my body, it’s not part of me. So does it keep moving in sliced time, or does it
immediately become part of realtime? So I’d pee, and it’s like it would move really fast and hit the ground almost before I peed it.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me listen to something so disgusting,” said Param.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you never thought of it. I bet you tried it.”

“It was better when we were slicing time,” said Param. “We couldn’t talk then.”

“So if you don’t like what I think of to say, you say something.”

For a minute or two she remained silent. Then she spoke. “Thank you for not making me slice time when the mice knew where I’d be.”

“I think if they wanted us dead, they’d find a way, but sure, I could see why you didn’t want to do it. And I didn’t want you to run the risk either.”

“So thanks,” she said.

Umbo wanted to laugh. It was such a simple thing, saying thanks, but for her it was hard. Probably not hard to say thanks—just hard to say it to
him
.

“We’re going to have to slice time eventually, though,” said Param. “We didn’t pack a lunch.”

Something perverse in him made Umbo return to the previous subject. “Farting, too,” said Umbo. “Bet it completely fades before we can smell it, if you fart while slicing time. And no, I absolutely won’t believe it if you tell me you never did
that
while slicing time.”

“I never—”

“I have sisters,” said Umbo. “Girls fart and snore and belch and pee and all the really gross offenses. They just pretend they don’t, and expect everybody else to go along with the lie.”

Umbo expected Param to say something cutting. Or move away from him in disgust. Or disappear.

Instead she farted.

“Oh, you couldn’t wait till we time-sliced,” said Umbo.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I’m sure it was a collective fart from all the mice around us.”

“The mice broke wind?” she said. “How advanced of them. They have evolved to the level of boys. Still, that leaves a long way to go.”

Umbo smiled. Only a little. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. Wasn’t it amazing that she could say rude things one moment and it felt like hatred, and then say equally rude things the next moment, and it sounded like an offer of friendship.

They reached the boundary of the colony, as far as he remembered from the map in the flyer’s display. But he had a good memory for where things were, a good eye for landmarks. It was here.

“Tired?” asked Umbo.

“You woke me out of a sound sleep two years ago and I’ve been walking continuously since,” said Param. “How could I be tired?”

“Can you slice time in your sleep?”

Param hesitated. “Sometimes I wondered if I disappeared in my sleep. If it was such a reflex that I slept all night but only got a couple of hours’ sleep.”

“Tired all the time?”

“I wanted to go back to bed the moment I woke up.”

“Sounds like my mother,” said Umbo.

Param was about to say something, then thought better of it.